4D FOUNDATION
This was a large and sprawling section of a performance/narrative foundation course at UC Santa Barbara in the Spring of 2005. Throughout the course, I encouraged students to experiment with video, web design, photography, sound or digital media as a way to add layers of form and meaning to the ephemeral performances that I remembered from having taken the course myself.
Right, Top-Right: Group project including Jenny Neymark, Bryan Langslet, Michael Bennett, and Alice Gong. Multi-channel video and live hip-hop MC performance. Props include moose head, home-made twister mat, and inflatable bondage chair. The project was in response to an assignment in which they were supposed to make a multi-panel narrative.
Left: Cleveland Motley's paper tuxedo. All the students in the class were challenged in the first two weeks to create a paper outfit and wear it to class. This student took apart a thrift-store suit in order to derive the pattern for his tux.
Above: Brett Helm's short video Sidewalk Flight is structured by three overlapping loops: the animation in the spraypaint frame, the live action of the person hanging the warhol poster, and the music clip in the background.
Above: Jenny Neymark's outfit is supported by thick ropes of braided newspaper.
Right: Jordan Harris's confession, one of the class's main projects, was his self-absorbtion. Click here for video documentation.
Above: For the final project, students were required to do a performance in public dealing with the construction of personal and public space. Because of the size of the class, I placed certain restrictions on their projects. All projects had to be situated on one of two imaginary lines that traversed major walkways on the university campus, all projects had to "say their ABC's," and two projects had to video tape. What resulted was a project that included every member of the class. They split into two groups, one protesting the alphabet and the other advocating it. They would meet at the intersection of the two imaginary lines. These parameters were to facilitate the critique, but they also were in the spirit with our class discussions, which included Lars van Trier's The Five Obstructions, a film dealing with the creative problem solving that adverse conditions can engender.